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The next Costume Institute Gala is over ten months away, but the fashion media is reporting on it in earnest. May as well fuss over it now, because, according to Fashion Week Daily, there could be much less to fuss over when it actually happens! For the event may not uphold its standing as the Oscars of the East Coast in 2010. Supposedly, next year's fund-raiser will be far less boldface. Insiders say the guest list will consist mostly of people who may not be famous, but are able to cough up the cash for full-price tickets. At this year's gala, several houses were reportedly too broke (or too cheap, depending on how you look at it) to buy tables and then fly in and dress famous people to fill the seats. Vogue's former events planner Stephanie Winston Wolkoff used to orchestrate these table purchases, presumably squeezing as much money out of each house as she could. Will Vogue's new event planner, Sylvana Soto-Ward, be as effective in this matter?

And then there are people like Michael Gross, who wrote Rogues' Gallery: The Secret History of the Moguls and the Money That Made the Metropolitan Museum and argues the celebrity-driven party makes the museum lowbrow. We can't speak for zebra carpeting, but we hardly find the likes of Karl Lagerfeld and Marc Jacobs lowbrow. Maybe the museum's non-fashion benefactors have grown restless for their own red-carpet moments, whether anyone cares about the pictures or not, and feel it's high time for their own private Kanye West performance.